1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a system of two or more imaging appliances linked together to form a cooperative system, and more specifically, to a method for introducing and linking the imaging appliances to form the cooperative system.
2. Description of Related Art
In the past, imaging appliances have been connected together for specific purposes. Scanners and printers have long had the capability to connect with a personal computer (“PC”) for purposes of receiving and printing images. These connections have typically been made with a cable, such as a parallel port, SCSI (Small Computer System Interface), or USB (Universal Serial Bus). Portable digital imaging appliances, such as digital cameras and hand scanners (e.g., Hewlett-Packard's Capshare appliance), have had the capability to communicate image files via an wireless link, such as a IrDA (Infrared Data Association) link. Moreover, with the advance of digital cameras it is not uncommon to find cameras using a wide variety of wired communication links such as standard RS-232 serial links, USB (universal serial bus), IEEE-1394, a.k.a. “firewire” (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers), and even S-video. However, most of these communications links were basically designed to allow the transfer of digital image files between two appliances.
Multiple cameras have been linked together in the past to take panoramic and three-dimensional (“3D”) photographs. In the case of panoramic photography, multiple cameras may be distributed around an object to each take a single photograph that is later combined into a single panoramic photograph. In the case of 3D photographs, two cameras are situated a few inches apart to duplicate the spacing of our eyes which provides stereo or 3D vision.
The cameras are typically linked together with a common cable release. The common cable release makes it possible to simultaneously fire any set of cameras that have a provision for a mechanical cable release to be screwed in. Thus, although systems of cameras have been designed to operate together, the primitive techniques used to join them together into a working system is very limited in it use and cumbersome to configure.
Therefore, it is desirable to obtain a dynamically configurable system of imaging appliances capable of cooperating together for a variety of purposes.